16 “Everything needs silicon-based systems,” says Dr. Adam (Adi) Teman of the Alexander Kofkin Faculty of Engineering. “Everything.” Fromquantumcomputing and 5G to big data andAI, integrated systems and circuits are the force that powers technology, doing, as former Intel Corp. senior executive David Perlmutter once said, “for the digital worldwhat fuel does for industry.” Yet despite the semiconductor’s indispensability, it has long played second fiddle in the Israeli tech scene, considered the lesssexy sibling of splashy software companies. Now, however, that may be about to change: As the U.S. and Europe seek to up their chip-design game—and decrease their dangerous dependency on the global chip-design and manufacture leader, Taiwan—multinational giants such as Google, Intel, and Microsoft are setting up and expanding their chip-design operations in Israel. All they’ll need to succeed, smiles Teman, is Bar-Ilan engineers. Ranked the top university in Israel for electrical engineering by the Times Higher Education, Bar-Ilan boasts the largest number of Israeli researchers in the field of hardware design. And in 2015—“years before theworldwas focused this problem,” points out Teman—they had formed EnICS, the researchcooperative cum lab almost single-handedly preparing the next generation of chip designers for Israeli industry. Formally titled the Emerging Nanoscaled Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory, EnICS was the elegant solution to a problem plaguing all institutions and companies trying to design a new chip: Namely, limited resources. “Developing a prototype generally requires at least two years andmore than 50 dedicated engineers. But even then, the average cost per chip is $50 million,” explains Teman, one of the six Bar-Ilan researchers who head the EnICS lab. “This means that most companies able to raise that kind of capital have little incentive to take risks when designing new chips; as it is, they can barely afford to pay the needed number of engineers. It also means It Takes a Kibbutz EnICS: The Emerging Nanoscaled Integrated Circuits and Systems Labs Image generated by AI
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